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Michael Miles—From Senegal to Seeger

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Protest, passion, politics, poetry—the banjo is the voice of the people, and “From Senegal to Seeger” unshackles that voice. “From Senegal to Seeger” is a journey into Americana, a social and political portrait of America through the eyes of the banjo.

In this ninety-minute tour de force, Michael Miles performs on seven banjos, playing music that spans three hundred years and charts the transformation of the banjo from an African instrument to the quintessential expression of the American voice. Protest songs, fiddle tunes, minstrel sounds—a dazzling array of banjo playing forms the backbone of “From Senegal to Seeger,” but it is the poetic words of participants and Miles’s masterfully woven narrative that complete this portrait of the American experience.

Miles has performed this critically acclaimed one-man musical documentary in a wide variety of venues over the past twenty years, including at the Smithsonian Institution and the Kennedy Center, both in Washington, DC.

Highly recommended . . . an exhilarating, musical, and multi-dimensional journey . . . a provocative, political, and social history of America